Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

Sam didn’t like Marx thinking of him as a misanthrope, even if he was one, and so, he turned.

“You’re incredibly gifted, Sam. But it is worth noting that to be good at something is not quite the same as loving it.”

Playing Dungeons & Dragons in a group of two people is a peculiar, intimate experience, and the existence of the campaign was kept a secret from everyone they knew.

Sadie liked the phrase “an abundance of caution.” It reminded her of a murder of crows, a flock of seagulls, a pack of wolves.

ne plus ultra.

He had tangled curly black hair, a puggish nose, glasses, a cartoonishly round head. In Sadie’s art class at school, she had been taught to draw by breaking things down into basic shapes. To depict this boy, she would have needed mainly circles.

“I feel bad for the Goombas.” “They’re just henchmen,” the boy said. “But it feels like they’ve gotten mixed up in something that has nothing to do with them.” “That’s the life of a henchman.

“I was in a car accident,” Sam said. “My foot is broken in twenty-seven places.” “That’s a lot of places,” Sadie said. “Are you exaggerating, or is that the number?” “It’s the number. I’m very particular about numbers.”

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.

“A maze,” he would say, “is a video game distilled to its purest form.” Maybe so, but this was revisionist and self-aggrandizing.

But I can tell you that the people who give you charity are never your friends. It is not possible to receive charity from a friend.”

This life is filled with inescapable moral compromises. We should do what we can to avoid the easy ones.”

Cellar Door Games

It was unfair, but attractive young women who had reputations for sleeping with powerful men acquired professional baggage.

Her work was basic and uninteresting. She had just turned twenty. Everyone’s work is basic and uninteresting at twenty.

being around Dov made her feel impatient with her twenty-year-old brain and the quality of its ideas.

girls like Sadie were conditioned to ignore the sexist generally, not just in gaming—it wasn’t cool to point such things out. If you wanted to play with the boys, they couldn’t be afraid of saying things around you.

He had said it would be trouble if she came to his apartment, and still she had gone. If someone tells you there will be trouble, believe them.

If someone tells you there will be trouble, believe them.

So, he protected Sam, and he made the world a little easier for Sam, and it cost him next to nothing to do so.

“I don’t think she wants me there.” Sam paused. “I’m not good at going places where I’m not wanted.” “That doesn’t matter,” Marx said. “It isn’t about you. Just show up every day to check in with her.”

Friendship,” Marx said, “is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.”

His mistake had been in thinking the world would be filled with Sadie Greens, people like her. It was not.

But to find someone who you wanted to talk to for 609 hours—that was rare. Even Marx—Marx was devoted, creative, and bright, but he was not Sadie.

I am, as you know, a bottomless pit of ambition and need.

Other people’s parents are often a delight.

It was 1996, and the word “appropriation” never occurred to either of them. They were drawn to these references because they loved them, and they found them inspiring. They weren’t trying to steal from another culture, though that is probably what they did.

And what is the alternative to appropriation? Kotaku: I don’t know. Mazer: The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures.

Beauty, after all, is almost always a matter of angles and resolve.

this is the truth of any game—it can only exist at the moment that it is being played.

In the end, all we can ever know is the game that was played, in the only world that we know.”

“Sam,” George said, “if you have the time, I would very much like us to have lunch. You name the day, and my assistant, Miss Elliot, will set it up.”

The Language Instinct.

In a way, Marx found producing for Sadie and Sam to be not entirely different from just being Sam’s roommate. Without calling a great deal of attention to himself, he made things easy for them. He fought fires. He anticipated needs and obstacles before they arose. That is what a producer does, and Marx would turn out to be a very fine producer.

he felt like Sadie might be the kind of book that one could read many times, and always come away with something new.

(1) all things were knowable by anyone, and (2) anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken.

“You can watch if you want. I’m going to play until the end of this life.” “That’s a good philosophy,”

“I doubt that leaves you enough time to get here and get a community service timesheet together.”

“Okay, Sammy,” she said. “I love you.” “Terribly,” he said.

Sam felt incredibly lonely and slightly sorry for himself.

He was tired of having to move so carefully, of having to be so careful.

He wanted to die a million deaths like Ichigo, and no matter what damage was inflicted on his body during the day, he’d wake up tomorrow, new and whole.

He wanted Ichigo’s life, a lifetime of endless, immaculate tomorrows,

Even though they would only get fifteen minutes with him, Sadie and Marx had decided to take a cab down to the hospital anyway.

The attending nurse, who was in her sixties and approaching retirement, let them stay until midnight. She was enjoying the sound of their laughter, their banter, and their gentle teasing.

“Yes, for a score of kingdoms, you should wrangle, and I would call it fair play.”

Sam’s stories were often apocryphal, or at the very least, reverse engineered.

She felt pleasure in orderly things—a perfectly efficient section of code, a closet where every item was in its place. She liked solitude and the thoughts of her own interesting and creative mind. She liked to be comfortable.

“Marx is always in love. He’s an emotional harlot.

Before she’d become a composer, she’d been a child cello prodigy, and she’d loved nothing so much as going outside, stripping, and playing by herself. Her mother had once discovered her this way behind their house and had made Zoe see a therapist. (The therapist determined that Zoe had the healthiest body image of any teenage girl he’d ever met.)